Research at The Walt Disney Company

Abstract

At The Walt Disney Company we tell stories. For us, technology and
science are always a means to an end. This influences what research
we do, and how we do it.

If the capability we need to tell a story is for sale in the
marketplace, then we can buy it. But if we need a capability that
is not commercially available, then we look to our research labs to
develop it. For example, some current topics of interest to us
include:

Because we dont need to make money from technology per se, and
because we have a leading position in the media & entertainment
industry, we can conduct our research more openly than many other
companies. We collaborate with academe, publish our results, and
work with research organizations at other companies. Jointly owned
intellectual property is often acceptable to us.

The idiosyncrasies of our business model thus make R&D at the Walt
Disney Company somewhat different than at other companies, but no
less important. We anticipate continued growth in our research
capabilities as we look for more and better ways to invent and
innovate around our core business of storytelling.

Speaker bio: Joe Marks grew up in Dublin, Ireland. He holds three
degrees from Harvard University. His areas of interest include
computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and artificial
intelligence. He has worked previously at Bolt Beranek and Newman
and at Digital's Cambridge Research Laboratory. Prior to joining
The Walt Disney Company he was the Research Director at Mitsubishi
Electric Research Labs (MERL) in Cambridge, MA, from 2000-2006.